Can Google be trusted?

Google got slapped with a record $22.5 million fine Thursday for breaking a promise to stop snooping on its users — shocking news to the average Internet user.

But regulators across the globe weren’t surprised because this isn’t the first time the search giant has been dinged for failing to keep up its end of the bargain with government enforcers.

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The track record of going back on its word when it comes to privacy has regulators around the globe wondering: Can Google be trusted?

Two weeks ago, Google confessed that it didn’t dump all the personal data it scooped up from Wi-Fi networks by its mapping cars. In April, a U.S. agency accused the company of holding up a probe into the same scandal.

Last year, it agreed to two years of privacy reviews by the Federal Trade Commission after it botched the rollout of a social network called Google Buzz that turned private email address books into public friend lists.

“Google’s defense that ‘we didn’t know;’ … that raises red flags for regulators,” said David Vladeck, the FTC’s director of Bureau of Consumer Protection. “As a regulator, it’s hard to know which answer is worse — ‘we didn’t know’ or ‘we did it deliberately.’ Both are bad.”

The FTC highlighted the trust issue Thursday when it levied the largest civil fine the agency has ever issued for Google’s flouting of the 2011 Buzz settlement. The offense: FTC officials say Google bypassed the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser while telling users it wasn’t tracking the websites they visited.

For its part, Google says it has worked diligently to cooperate with regulators and takes “privacy and security very seriously.” The company has also taken steps to remove the ad cookies from Safari and says the tools never collected personal information from the browser to begin with.

“We work closely with regulators to answer their questions and we are always happy to have feedback on our products,” a Google spokesperson told POLITICO.

That feedback hasn’t been good lately.

“The accretion of these issues and enforcement actions simply undermines trust and credibility, which goes to the core of their business model,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who investigated Google as Connecticut’s attorney general in 2010, told POLITICO. “As a former law-enforcement official, credibility and trust are very important to assessing generally whether and how to settle cases.”

Privacy officials overseas are in a huff about Google’s recent revelation that it discovered a fresh batch of data from about a dozen countries from its Street View mapping cars, including personal tidbits gleaned from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. The United Kingdom and France have reopened their investigations and are demanding that Google hand over the data. And earlier this week, Australia’s top privacy cop said he is “concerned that the existence of these additional disks has come to light, particularly as Google had advised that the data was destroyed.”

On Thursday, Google agreed to enter into a settlement with the FTC and pay the $22.5 million fine, a move that allows the company to avoid admitting guilt. FTC Commissioner Thomas Rosch didn’t vote for the settlement — he thought the company should have been forced to admit to violating the 2011 FTC agreement. “[T]his is not the first time the Commission has charged Google with engaging in deceptive conduct,” Rosch said in a statement. “This is Google’s second bite at the apple.”